


Hangman's Joke

by JasperIsAFanboy



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), The Crow - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Decapitation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Torture, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, are 'the crow' aus a thing? guess they are now, assuming i write any more o this, dh2 hadnt even been announced when i started this wa-hey, he gets better tho, hey look im adding to it, idk if its gonna be finished or not but im writing more nonetheless, non-canon compliant post dh1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: Abashed the Devil stood, and felt how awful Goodness is.or: "the crow" au.





	1. burn

**Author's Note:**

> so a while back, when i was still obsessed w dishonored, i was listening to 'the crow soundtrack' and decided, hey, know what'd be a rad idea? if i wrote an au based around the crow, bc if ever there was a perfect setup for one it's dishonored. this is as far as i got. i based the crow elements only on the original movie and poppy z brite's novel; i've only seen one o the sequels and i've never read the other books or the original comic. (i know, i know, i dishonor my fellow goths, shame upon my house.) i'll probably never finish this, but i found it while i was cleaning my desk yesterday and reread it and whaddya know, i still like it. so here it is. sorry it ends so abruptly but it is a wip and likely to remain so, after all.
> 
> title refers to eric draven's band, summary from. well, technically 'paradise lost' but it's used in the movie too. i was gonna name the chapters after the songs in the soundtrack.
> 
> edit (12/25): hey look i'm writing more! putting a chapter count might be optimistic of me, but that's how many i'm aiming for, since that's how many songs there are in the crow soundtrack. will i finish this? will i abandon it again? who knows, not me

In some parts of the Isles, longer ago than any human can reckon, it was believed that the Outsider carried the dead into the Void. He took the form of a crow or a raven, it was said, and clutched the dead soul in his talons and flew to the Void with it. The belief began to die out and was largely lost to time even before the Abbey of the Everyman came to trample folk beliefs under their boots. No one now retains this belief, and its existence has largely been forgotten and lost to time. Not even the historians know it existed.

This does not mean it’s untrue.

 

The Outsider’s eyes, as black as the night sky, can see every possibility for every life. They branch from each life like veins. Some shine bright, the more so with their likelihood. For most, there is one such possibility, one potential that blazes and leaves all the others dim. They are the predictable ones, the ones not worth his attention. A few have multiple bright possibilities, and they briefly interest him. These are the ones to whom he grants his mark: Vera Moray, Delilah Copperspoon, Daud.

Of this last, elite group, only one ever truly fascinated him: Corvo Attano. Paths of potential blazed like infernos, more numerous than any other life the Outsider had seen in a very long time. In some he was a ruthless killer, cutting a bloody swath through Dunwall like a scythe through grass. In others he killed only those who had directly wronged him. These all burned brightest, the easier paths. He never chose these paths. Instead, he chose a dimmer path, one which left his enemies alive but condemned to fates worse than death, ironic and poetic and infinitely more cruel. His every move surprised the Outsider, every life spared when taking it would have eased his way. He was the first thing in years beyond even the Outsider’s reckoning to truly interest him.

The Outsider sometimes examined the other possibilities of Corvo’s life. Time was meaningless to the Outsider; from his perspective, everything happened at once, past and present and future all in one to him, and he could watch everything to his own satisfaction. In some of Corvo’s possibilities, he returned late to Dunwall and found the empress already dead. Sometimes little Emily died instead of Jessamine, driving both of her parents to extremes of merciless grief. Sometimes the child died in her mother’s arms.

Sometimes it was Corvo who died.

 

Those that had believed the Outsider ferried the dead also believed something else:

That when the dead soul was wronged in an awful way, the Outsider could bring them back.

 

The crow that winged its way over the forbidding gray walls of Coldridge Prison was an unusually large specimen. Magnificent too, in its way: its sharp beak shone dully in the searchlights of the prison yard, its beady eyes possessed a singularly un-avian intelligence, its talons curved like an eagle’s, its glossy feathers gleamed iridescent black. Certainly there was no shortage of crows and ravens and jackdaws around Coldridge; if they weren’t scavenging on the prison’s trash, they were scavenging on its dead. While most were executed by beheading (considered the more humane death), some were still hanged, and where there is a gibbet there are crows.

This particular bird avoided its brethren and made for the graveyard. An onlooker might have wondered why, since there was nothing evident to attract the bird. The graves were all covered. But the bird seemed to have an agenda of its own. It landed with a flutter of wings on the loose earth of a fresh grave. It cawed, hooped about for a moment, then turned to look at the name on the simple wooden marker as if reading it:

Corvo Attano.

There was nothing else on the marker; no personal details (not even dates of birth or death), no symbols for life and none for any hopes the living had for the dead man’s afterlife, nothing to indicate Corvo had been anything other than a common criminal like many of the others moldering in Coldridge. The crow fluttered to the top of the marker and cawed again, this time an ear-splitting, harsh noise that would have made even the hardest of hearts quail. It started to peck at the wood marker, driving its sharp beak into the wood.

 

In the darkness, there was light.

Blue light surrounded him, cushioned him, cradled and comforted him. It whispered to him in a voice achingly familiar and yet totally alien, told him that he was now safe, that he no longer had anything to fear. He wanted to believe the voice.

But a deep ache seemed to dominate him, to whatever extent “he” still existed. It was terrible and devouring, this ache, like one of the great leviathans swallowing him whole. That he had no body only made the ache worse, somehow, a soul-hurt that nothing could succor.

He was dead, and he ached.

The voice eventually fell silent in the face of the pain. It was not loud enough to drown out the roar of the pain; it was like a sigh in the face of a gale.

The blue light turned white, and the pain grew worse.

 

The crow continued pecking at the wood marker. Every strike of its beak sounded like the thud of the headsman’s axe striking the block.

 

He did not want to rise.

Awareness was returning to him; he had not had enough of himself to want anything, but now he had this un-desire. Allhe had known was the blue and the voice, but then had come the pain and now this un-desire to rise. However, no matter how greatly he wished to stay and lose himself again, he was being pulled up as a fish is pulled on a line, out of the blue and away from the voice. As awareness returned more fully, he had a thought, the first he’d had in what felt like eons:

‘This must be like birth.’

 

Beneath the soil of the grave, processes were reversing and matter was changing. Inside the cheap wooden coffin, a single thump echoed like a drumbeat.

Little had been done for the corpse by way of embalming; it was not Coldridge’s way to waste chemicals and effort on a corpse no one would want to come collect. Besides, the powers that be had not wanted to give anything to the man who would betray and kill the woman he’d sworn to protect. They didn’t know the falsity of the idea, of course; few did, and they would never tell. The corpse’s head wasn’t even snug against the body, resting a full centimeter from the neck. Not such a large distance, but large enough when a head had to be reattached. If the crow could have huffed in frustration, it would have. But it persisted.

Severed tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, and spinal cord stretched and writhed like worms towards each other, seeking wholeness and reunion. They met and reattached, tissue knitting back together, and by the strength of their reunion pulled the head back to the neck until it was flush. Then the skin closed, leaving behind a scar, dark and vicious and ugly. The vocal chords, unnecessary as they were to continued life, did not restore themselves; they remained severed. Corvo Attano had never spoken much when he was alive; he would not, could not, speak at all now.

With the reattachment of the brain stem came the restoration of unconscious activity. The thump came again, then again, until it was clearly a heartbeat. It was slower than usual, unlikely to ever truly quicken, but it was steady, pumping fresh blood into empty veins as it welled up somehow within the heart’s chambers. With blood came breath: Corvo gave a great gasping inhale, pain blossoming in his chest as his lungs reinflated. Consciousness came at last, and on its heels memory.

Hot iron and cold blades. A lash across his back. The mute, idiot grunting of the torturer. And always, Hiram Burrows’ ratlike face, his cold eyes and promontory of a nose, his voice telling him to sign the confession and legitimize his lies. Campbell, lurking in the back, his jacket red as the blood that spilled from Jessamine, red as the coat worn by her real killer. The days of agony, the cold nights of grief. The terror. The anguish. The rage.

Always and forever, the blinding, incandescent rage that threatened to burn him to ashes.

That last horrible minute, when Jessamine was bleeding out in his arms. Her blood washed warm over his hands as he held her close, aching as though he’d been the one stabbed instead. Emily’slast desperate cry rang in his ears. The city watch, ignorant pawns of Burrows, grabbed his arms and her body, tore it away from him, ignored his pleas of innocence.

The cold stone of his cell. The colder steel of the axe that took his head from his body. He remembered it cleaving through tissue and bone, remembered the sickening spin of the world as his head rolled from the block. No one had ever told him that life was not extinguished as soon as a head was severed, that a few moments of horrible awareness still remained. It was knowledge he quite easily could have done without.

Tears leaked out from behind his still-closed eyes. He tried to scream, to give voice to his pain and rage, but his dead vocal chords did not obey. He made no sound.

Corvo’s hands came up and struck the lid of the coffin. Unreasoning animal panic gripped him that he’d spend his second life in his coffin. He put his arms against the lid and heaved. His muscles flexed and exerted a far greater strength than he’d known in life. The coffin lid began to move despite the weight of the dirt above it. It rose, the dirt flooding away, and with one titanic effort Corvo pushed it open enough to sit up.

The crow, no longer pecking at his marker, merely watched with impassive black eyes.

The dirt heaved again and erupted as the coffin rose. Corvo crawled out of the grave, every muscle shrieking in agony at being used after the stiffness of death set in. He collapsed, gasping, in the mud. New (old?) memories were swamping him: Emily running to greet him that last day, the terror in her voice as she ran to her mother during the attack. The fear in Jessamine’s voice as she called to Corvo. How he’d been seized by some supernatural means and held immobile, helpless, unable to do anything but watch. The measured way the red-coated assassin stalked towards Jessamine, the absolute callousness with which he’d backhanded her before striking the killing blow, an outrage on top of injury. It was solely in retaliation for Jessamine’s attempt to protect Emily.

His body shook as he gave a soundless sob, clutching at himself. His throat was raw and sore, likely from the decapitation.

How smug all the nobles in their finery had looked as the axe came down on his neck. He hadn’t heard them, but he could guess well enough what they’d said:

“Serkonan dog.”

“Filthy bastard.”

“Serves him right, the ungrateful wretch.”

“That’s what she got for choosing him instead of a good Gristol lad.”

“Can’t ever trust the Serks.”

Jackals. They didn’t deserve the dirt Jessamine had walked on, none of them.

He knew no one believed in his innocence. He’d heard the guards. Everyone in the Isles, probably, believed he’d killed the one woman he’d ever loved, all because he was Serkonan and that bastard Burrows had said so. Who would believe the upstart Serkonan over an old servant of Gristol, milk-white and born and bred in Dunwall itself? No wonder Morley had rebelled. Too bad they’d failed.

The crow cawed at him. Corvo turned to look at it and heard a voice in his mind:

“You don’t have time to wallow in grief and anger, Corvo. You need to get away from here.”

Corvo stared at it, confused. Had he just been spoken to by a crow?

“I brought you back to life, too,” the crow said, cocking its head. “The fact that I’m speaking to you should be the least remarkable part.”

As if on cue, a searchlight swept past, perilously close to where Corvo lay in the muck. The crow was right, surely the wreckage of his grave would be discovered sooner rather than later. His limbs still ached, but the pain was subsiding. He thought he could move. He pushed himself upright and got to his feet. He wobbled, but stood steady. He glanced at the crow. He tried to speak, but only a dry gasp came from his throat.

“You can’t speak,” the crow said. “Your head is attached, but only the vessels and muscles and other important bits work. You don’t need your vocal chords to live. I’m sorry.” It didn’t sound sorry. “I can hear your thoughts, you don’t need to speak to me.”

Corvo decided not to question the crow’s words, but there was one thing he wanted to know: “Why bring me back?”

“There’ll be time for answers later. Now is not that time.” The crow fluttered its wings. “Now is the time for action.”

Corvo snorted. So he was genuinely mute now; it wouldn’t matter much. He’d spoken so rarely before he’d often been taken for mute. The crow made a garbled noise in its throat and took flight. It circled around before landing on a drainpipe. It cawed at Corvo and hopped up and down. Corvo took a few staggering steps, trying to make his legs obey him again. The more he walked the more his muscles remembered their purposes, and by the time he reached the drainpipe he was walking almost normally. The pipe’s bars were rusted through, and he managed to break them with his new strength. It was just big enough for him to fit through. He realized ruefully that six months ago it would have been too small for him; Coldridge had carved him into a gaunt specter of himself, sinew and bone wrapped in the tattered remnants of a Lord Protector’s uniform.

The crow took off as he crawled into the pipe. He knew he’d find it waiting for him when he reached the end of the pipe. While he crawled through the stinking pipe, his mind wandered to the past, to Jessamine and Burrows.That rage, banked temporarily as he readjusted to life, now returned full force. His lips peeled back from his teeth.

How dare Burrows.How dare he have Jessamine killed. How dare he blame Corvo for her death. He wished he could be shocked that the lie had been so easily swallowed, but he’d been in Dunwall too long for such naivety. He’d heard the whispers since Jessamine had chosen him. But it rankled nonetheless.

Perhaps he’d been brought back for revenge. Was this his chance to avenge Jessamine, to see those who’d wronged them both brought down?

He hoped so.

He didn’t think his rage would permit anything else.

 


	2. golgotha tenement blues

Once he was out of the drainpipe, Corvo ducked under an overhang, out of sight of any guards. He wondered where the crow was. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he felt a tug at the back of his mind like a fish hook, drawing his attention down the river. The tug intensified. Corvo slipped out from under the overhang and dove into the river. He swam for several yards, untroubled by the hagfish, and surfaced near another drainpipe. The crow stood atop it.

He didn’t question how he knew it was his crow. The tug on his mind had gone, but it had remained strong up until the point he spotted the crow. It cawed at him and took flight. Corvo waded to shore and followed. The bird led him to a shack beside the river. Corvo paused in the door and looked around; it reeked of fish guts but it was dry. From the look of the place, it had been abandoned. Dust coated every available surface, including the cobwebs in the corners: even the spiders had left. A rat, sitting in the corner cleaning its whiskers, looked at the bird and at Corvo. The crow cawed at it, and it jumped and fled through a hole in the wall. The crow flew in and landed on the table.

“We won’t stay here long,” it said.

“I beg to differ,” Corvo replied. He dropped onto the shack’s single wooden chair. It creaked alarmingly but held. He ached horribly now, from his neck to his toes. His muscles might have remembered how to live, but they still weren’t recovered fully. All of his injuries stung and itched, from the scar on his neck to the weal on his cheek to every mark left by the torturer that had had yet to heal before his death. He was exhausted.

“You hurt now,” the crow said, “but soon you’ll have recovered. And then—“

“Why did you bring me back?” Corvo interrupted. The crow fluffed irritably. “I was at peace.”

“You were dead. You didn’t have enough self left to be anything else.”

“Same difference.” Corvo glared at the crow. “I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t so angry that I feel like I’m going to burn up from the inside out. I didn’t miss Jessamine or hate Burrows or worry about Emily. Why couldn’t you have left me alone?”

The crow cocked its head. “You’re wrong,” it said. “You were in pain, you just didn’t know it. Your pain called, and I answered.”

Corvo sighed and allowed his head to fall to his chest. “Why did you answer?” he asked. “You say I was in pain, but I didn’t know it. Why couldn’t you let me keep my ignorance?”

“Better to live in knowledge.”

“Ignorance is bliss.”

“Ignorance got Jessamine killed.”

Corvo rocked back in the chair as if the crow had physically struck him. He stared at it, eyes wide.

“Don’t pretend otherwise,” the crow said. “She was unaware of Burrows’ plans and his ambition, and she paid for it with her life. It’s not her fault, but she should’ve been more suspicious of him.”

“It wasn’t in her nature.”

The crow ruffled its wings in a gesture that might have been a shrug. “But it might have kept her alive.”

Corvo looked away from the crow. He knew it was right; Burrows had never been a subtle man, and he was as obvious in his disdain for Jessamine as he was in all other aspects of his life. Corvo had seen the looks of contempt he flashed Jessamine behind her back, the way he sneered at her compassion, the disapproval with which he regarded Emily. Corvo should have done something about it. He was the Lord Protector, it was his job to protect the empress. Burrows had been an obvious, clear threat for far too long. Corvo had been too busy playing house, too confident in his own skill, too naive to realize that one of the empress’ own servants was plotting her demise. Everything that had happened was Burrows’ fault, but Corvo was not without his own share of the blame. He knew this, was well aware of this.

But it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

He leaned forward, put his face in his hands. He wept, soundless but no less agonized for it. The crow let him. It even flew over and landed on his shoulder, nuzzled the back of his head. Eventually Corvo’s sobs eased. He sniffed hard and scrubbed his face with his hands. He turned his head enough to catch sight of the crow in his peripheral vision.

“So you brought me back to avenge Jessamine, did you?” he asked. “Why? What stake do you have in this?”

The crow made a noise in its throat that might have been a laugh. “I’ve brought you back to life to punish the ones who killed the woman you love, killed _you_ , and kidnapped your daughter, and you bother to ask me why?”

“If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

The crow fluttered to the floor and looked up at Corvo. “You’re a fascinating man, Corvo Attano,” it said. It cocked its head. “That’s not why, by the way.” It hopped to the door, then turned around. “Can we move on now? This place is boring.”

Corvo would have laughed if he could. He stood and went to the door. “Where are we going, then?”

“I don’t know, but I hope we find someplace less boring.”

 

After leaving the shack, Corvo headed into the sewers. From them he’d be able to reach any part of Dunwall he wanted; he needed to find shelter somewhere. He wasn’t sure what the rules were about being a living corpse, and he needed someplace secure where he could hide if he had to. He still wanted to interrogate the crow more, in the hopes of learning more about what he currently was from it. Did he need food, sleep, warmth? He was stronger now, but did he have any other advantages over mortal men? Did he have a time limit in which he had to bring down Burrows, or could he take as long as he needed? For that matter, would he die again once Burrows was gone? If that was so, would taking out anyone who’d worked with Burrows end his reanimation? If he killed Campbell, would that suffice? Or would he linger until he’d destroyed everyone involved with Burrows’ plot? What if he kept living even after that?

All this and more occupied Corvo’s mind as he waded through the knee-deep water. If nothing else, it was a welcome distraction from the stench of the sewer and the drifts of rotten matter that floated past him. The sewers were largely devoid of life beyond rats and river krusts. The former sometimes sniffed at him but otherwise avoided him, and the river krusts ignored him. Perhaps a corpse didn’t register as a threat to the otherwise aggressive mollusks. Occasionally he spotted unattended fires and wondered who’d lit them, where they’d gone. He never saw anyone near them; the only humans he saw were two corpses, wrapped in one last embrace, and a weeper at the end of a tunnel. He avoided that tunnel. He doubted he could catch plague, but he had no desire to fight, not yet. He headed down a side-tunnel, barely tall enough to permit him to walk doubled over, and paused.

The crow, riding on his shoulder, asked, “What is it?”

“I hear something.”

After a moment, the faint scuffling sound he’d heard grew louder and louder still, then accompanied by squeaks. Moments later, a massive rat swarm rounded a bend in the tunnel and boiled towards him, a tidal wave of furry bodies. Corvo had no time to run, no weapons to chase them off with. He braced himself for their assault.

The swarm split and flowed around him like water around a rock. They didn’t even investigate him, though the handful of albinos in the swarm glanced at him as they passed. He might as well have been part of the scenery, for all the attention they paid him. They jostled him and sometimes tripped over his feet, but otherwise they barely seemed to realize he was there. Corvo could only stare in awe. He’d never heard of rat swarms avoiding any flesh, living or dead; they’d devour a corpse as thoroughly and willingly as they would a living person.

The swarm headed off down the tunnel and disappears from view. Corvo stared after it nonetheless,still somewhat in shock. After a moment, he continued walking.

Eventually he found his way out of the sewer to the shores of the Wrenhaven. The sun was setting across the river, lighting its surface and a passing trawler with molten gold. Corvo stood for a moment, letting the light blind him, simply taking in the sounds of the river, the faint rustle of the breeze in the reeds, the smell of the water. For the first time, he was glad of his resurrection; he had a chance to make things right, to see Jessamine’s killers punished and Emily restored to her rightful place. For a moment, he forgot that he was, effectively, dead. For a moment, he had hope that everything could be fixed.

Then the crow landed on his shoulder and gave his ear a very light peck. The brief moment of peace shattered. Corvo closed his eyes as everything came flooding back to him.

“I can’t do this tonight,” he said. “I need… I need a moment to rest, I need…”

“We’re near Holger Square,” the crow replied after a moment. “There should be empty apartments around there that you could hide out in.”

“Good.”

Corvo turned from the water and picked his way along the shore. At times he was forced to wade through the river, but it was a far cry from wading through sewage, and he welcomed the opportunity to clean some of the muck from his clothes. He’d need new ones, he knew, but he’d be damned if he’d get rid of his jacket. It was his last link to who he was, who he’d been. He needed it, no matter how filthy and damaged it was. Maybe he’d eventually find a way to fix it. The sun sank below the horizon, colors fading into deep blues and purples, then to full night. Corvo could no longer see to navigate the riverside. He turned away from it and headed down an alley.

Just as the crow had said, there were any number of abandoned apartments and tenements along the alley. Some were inhabited by indigents, huddled in layers of clothing and sparing Corvo not an iota of attention; likely enough, to them he was simply another unfortunate looking for a place to spend the night. One building was blocked, the first and second floor windows boarded up and painted with plague signs. Corvo could hear a weeper shuffling within, heard the wet splatter of vomit against the floor. He winced and moved on. Near the end of the alley, a door stood open slightly. The crow, previously riding Corvo’s shoulder, launched from its perch and winged through the door. It cawed once.

“Clear of weepers, but there’re people in the first floor rooms.”

Corvo went in. He crept past the inhabited rooms, following the crow down the hall and up the stairs at the far end. The second and third floors were inhabited as well. The stairs led up to the roof, where a widow’s walk spanned the roof and came so close to the building next door that Corvo, even in his weakened state, could jump the gap easily. He went to the other side of the roof, found that it overlooked Bottle Street. He could see a pair of gang members on the street below, throwing rocks at a mattress. Further down the street, he could see a balcony where an old woman stood, seemingly glaring down at them in disapproval. Corvo turned and headed into the building.

It had four stories, but the stairs were blocked halfway between the second and third stories. The third and fourth were uninhabited, leading Corvo to suspect the first floor was barred somehow. An apartment on the fourth floor was still somewhat furnished, a bookshelf leaning precariously in a corner and chairs toppled and scattered around a table, still upright. The crow flew to the table and hunkered down. It closed its eyes, which Corvo took as a sign that the apartment was, for the moment, safe. He therefore made a beeline for the bed shoved against the far wall. It had a stained mattress on it and naught else, but to Corvo, a dead man walking who'd spent the last six months in a cell in Coldridge, it was finer than the beds in Dunwall Tower. He shucked off his jacket, his sodden shirt and boots, and went to the bed. He fell into it.

He was asleep within seconds.


End file.
